The Electric Guitar Review

UV77 RE’s basswood body recreates the legendary multi-color motif, arriving once again from original designer Darren Johansen, the master of swirl. All UV77 RE models are handcrafted by Ibanez’s finest luthiers in Japan, just like the original UV77’s.

(Bensalem, PA) It was 20 years ago when Steve Vai joined forces with Ibanez to produce his ultimate weapon, the 7-string Universe, the first production 7-string solid-body electric guitar. The groundbreaking Universe was quickly recognized as the “Most Innovative Guitar of the Year” by music retailers at the 1990 Music and Sound Awards.

Originally designed as a virtuoso shred machine, the guitar would have a new life later in the ‘90s with its extended low-end range making possible the new breed of rhythmic metal of heavy music players such as Korn and Dino Cazares. Ibanez is proud to recognize Steve Vai’s achievement with the release of the new UV77RE Universe 20th Anniversary edition.

Like the original, the solid body UV77RE reissue is seven strings of fire, ready-made for maximum shred and some of the meanest riffing on the planet. The multi-color swirl motif arrives once again from the original Universe artist, Darren Johansen. Because of the swirl paint process each Universe guitar is uniquely individual in appearance. As with Ibanez’s other Limited Edition Reissues such as the famous Bob Weir model, all UV77RE models are crafted in Japan by the same luthiers who created the originals.

1990 not only brought the Ibanez Universe guitar to the world, it also debuted Steve Vai’s groundbreaking, earth shattering album, “Passion and Warfare”, and each U77RE comes with a commemorative poster of this sonic masterpiece.

Obsessed with digital guitar, misadigital.com (based in Sydney, Australia) created a unique stringless touchscreen guitar. The guitar sound is generated from the computer inside the guitar. It will be emulated using MIDI sound.

The Misa digital guitar is a MIDI controller. It must be plugged into a MIDI capable sound module. The sound of this instrument is limited only by what you connect to it.

The guitar itself is CNC machined out of solid ABS plastic. This is an extremely solid body, not like injection moulded plastic which is thin, lightweight and hollow.

The screen is an 8.4″ LCD 800×600 resolution. The CPU is a 500MHz x86 compatible AMD Geode which makes life easier, I guess. The operating system is Gentoo Linux which I’ve stripped down to be as lean as possible. Graphics (framebuffer access) is done with DirectFB which acts as a fast layer on top of the hardware.

The neck is 144 “keycaps” sitting on top of a special keymat that I had tooled. They are not pressure sensitive – but I made the decision early on not to include this because I don’t feel it is neccessary, it would make the instrument harder to play and less reliable.